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“Republican leaders in the Kansas House on Friday said they didn’t intend to include an expansion of charter schools as part of a school funding bill intended to address the Supreme Court’s ruling on school finance. And while they said they intend to introduce a new bill without the charter school provision, education groups said they still have major concerns about other provisions of the bill, such as merit-based pay for teachers, changes in teacher licensing requirements and offering corporate tax breaks for funding private school scholarships.” http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2014/mar/21/charter-school-provision-mistake-gop-leaders-admit/ We haven’t seen the new bill, but it sounds like there will...

Now Speaker Merrick is saying the appropriations bill was not supposed to contain the charter provisions, and a new appropriations bill is being drafted. See http://www.kansas.com/2014/03/21/3358868/house-speaker-wont-allow-charter.html But that seems inconsistent with what he said in this morning’s edition of the Wichita Eagle: “’If we’re going to spend that money, we’ve got to get some policy stuff. To me, that’s only logical,’ said House Speaker Ray Merrick, R-Stilwell, shortly after the bill was introduced. . . . Merrick called the 91-page bill a ‘work in progress and a starting point’ and said he expected additions to be made and some...

Instead of simply doing an appropriations bill to comply with the Gannon decision, the House Republican leadership has written a 91-page bill (HB 2773) that reads like a list of ALEC policies. (1) It would provide for the ALEC expansion of charters and would establish an independent chartering board, with the governor appointing three members, the Senate president and House speaker each appointing two members, and the minority leaders of the House and Senate each choosing one appointee. (2) It creates a new income tax deduction for contributions to charter schools. (3) It would enact corporate tax credit scholarships....